Happy birthday, Harry!

Today, Harry Potter from J.K. Rowling‘s phenomenal wizarding series turns 21! Break out the fireworks and crackers for The Boy Who Lived!

We were supposed to hold a birthday party in Harry’s honor at school, but it seemed that everybody has been very busy lately and did not have the time to put it together as we have liked.

Instead, we put up a bulletin board of sorts last Thursday for anything Harry Potter-related, where we die-hards and other interested parties can post stuff.

Myself, I printed out movie still downloads and had them up for the ogling pleasure of fangirls (who thought that Snape/Alan Rickman is hot – and I totally agree).

It’s too bad about the party, really, because I was planning to wear a Sibyll Trelawney costume: beads on a 1920s sheath dress, bangles, oversized cat sunglasses and lots of scarves.

I have been reading Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets for, like, the fifth time this month, and I remembered a poem that I read in Brief Lives, a story arc from cult hit DC Vertigo Sandman comic book series penned by Neil Gaiman.

This poem was written by a character named Destruction, and he read it aloud to his pet dog named Barnabas.

Afterwards, wise-ass Barnabas commented that this supposed literary masterpiece was “Doggerel…rubbishy doggerel.”

Of course, who better to recognize doggerel than a dog itself?

The basilisk and cockatrice are wizard-legend beasts who are fabled to be capable of killing with just a look at the victim. Basically, their stares petrify or, simply put, “freeze” the unfortunate receiver sans the ice (think Sub-Zero of Mortal Kombat fame).

Both beasts are hatched from the egg of a cock. However, some describe the basilisk to be more lizard-like, while the cockatrice has the form of a serpent.

Have fun, everyone. It’s Friday the 13th!

Basilisk and Cockatrice
A Moral Poem

I dreamed I saw a basilisk
That basked upon a rocky shore
I looked upon the basilisk
With eyes of stone I looked no more.

I dreamed I saw a cockatrice
A-chewing on a piece of bone
I gazed upon the cockatrice
One cannot gaze with eyes of stone.

To look upon a basilik
Is really never worth the risk
To gaze upon a cockatrice
Is permanent and never nice.
For it can never be denied
Life isn’t pleasant, petrified.

Maybe it’s because of all those Harry Potter books that I am now a very avid tea drinker. And that’s just putting it mildly.

I don’t know, but I have found myself drinking nothing else lately. My mother’s friend, who got me the HP books from Hong Kong (thus I have the British edition, the original Rowling prose), gave us a boxful of Lipton teabags that produce a very delicious beverage *starry eyes* I ran through the entire box in five days max, and am now stuck in stuffy grocery stores during school breaks looking for the exact same blend. A fruitless quest, so far.

So that leaves me stuck with thin-tasting “foreign” brands that were, in fact, manufactured locally. But tea is tea, and I love it.

I tried to drink coffee this afternoon, and it has been the better part of two weeks since I last drank something coffee-like or some such. I could only bring myself to drink about two-fifths or so of the cupful, which was foaming with cream and, in my previous standards, utterly delicious. But it was not like that anymore.

I think the slow market drain of Nescafé frothé left me heartbroken, because I seem to veer away from coffee when I learned that they were phasing the blends out.

Gosh. I really am beginning to sound like a someone seriously deprived – or depraved. Your pick.

I think I will go make some tea to settle my nerves.